Dyson to open Aurora call center, add 200 jobs

Vacuum cleaner maker to invest $1.5M in facility

Dyson service representative Shawn Edwards takes apart a DC25 vacuum to walk a customer through their issue Wednesday in Aurora. (Chuck Berman/Tribune)

British vacuum cleaner maker Dyson is investing $1.5 million in a new call center in Aurora and plans to hire 200 employees over the next two years as it expands its customer service staff.

The company, founded by inventor James Dyson, entered the U.S. market 10 years ago with its bagless cyclone technology and established its American office with two people in River North. Six years ago, it moved to bigger space in the former Montgomery Ward catalog building at 600 W. Chicago Ave., which also houses the headquarters for daily deal company Groupon Inc. Dyson employs nearly 500 in the U.S., with about 325 in the Chicago area, most of them at the downtown headquarters. The company also operates a store and service center in Schaumburg.

"We're at the bursting point now," said Rob Cherry, Dyson's vice president of finance. "We know our growth is going to continue over the next few years. We needed to relocate our call center."

The 100 employees on Dyson's contact center team will be moving from the Chicago headquarters to the new facility in Aurora, with most completing the move by the end of next week. The company is planning to hire 200 more reps over the next two years to bring the call center up to full capacity.

The Aurora office is Dyson's sole call center in the U.S. and handles questions that come in via telephone, social media and online chat. The team can process up to 10,000 calls a day. When the Aurora center is at full capacity, it will be able to handle up to 30,000.

Cherry said Dyson did not receive any incentives for the move to Aurora. The company chose the suburb because it was relatively close to the Chicago headquarters and had good access to transportation and lunch options, he said. The building was constructed but was "an empty shell," allowing Dyson to design a space with the same open, modern vibe as its other facilities. Construction started in the spring and the first group of employees moved in last month.

Unlike traditional call centers where representatives are tethered to their phones and computers, reading a script off a screen, Dyson staffers sport wireless headsets so they can walk over to stations that house current and past models of the company's products. Representatives often go through the same steps of taking apart a vacuum cleaner as they give customers troubleshooting steps.

In fact, all new company employees -- including the ones that will be hired for the Aurora call center -- are required to take apart and reassemble a Dyson vacuum cleaner on their first day. Cherry recalls completing this task 11 years ago.